Oh surprise! Harry Potter’s new “pay to play” game now earns half as much as Fortnite

If you look back, you will remember that on April 25, just a couple of months ago, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery came to Google Play . Many people were missing a game of the famous saga of magic, and Jam City was responsible for making it happen. However, the game of decision making and ROL generated mixed feelings, and that is that although it is true that the setting was wonderful, I was focused 100% on what you spent per box to play . I already told you that I was testing it thoroughly and that not even 15 minutes passed before making me pay for energy. Well, the strategy has gone round.

When I took myI said literally the following: “My first impressions are dire. I do not want to say that the game does not have to have micropayments, since the developers must earn money in some way, but I think the game is going “over.” This is because at 15 minutes of departure, ‘magically’, you run out of energy and you had to wait for half an hour or win 4 euros to get it back . This, for those of us who have been in this world of Android and video games for a while, is synonymous with the fact that it can only get worse. At the beginning of the game you have little energy, but as you progress you get more and, therefore, either wait longer or pay more money. Classic freemium , in a nutshell.

Although I did not have high expectations in Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery – in fact I thought I was doomed to failure – I was surprised when this week it was published that the game had generated in only two months of life 40 million dollars in Android and iOS . This, so that you have a broader perspective, is almost half of what Fortnite has generated since its launch on iOS (100 million and increasing) and more than double what has generated Monument Valley on all platforms in two years.

The App Store keeps 30% of the cost of micropayments, but the guys from Jam City have got a good peak with its launch.

The success of Free-To-Play is indisputable , as much as the ‘old dogs’ as a server do not like it. I am against micropayments, and I prefer to pay 10 euros for a complete game than to pay for fascicles or to be forced to wait half an hour to play. However, it is a model that has come to stay and that, in addition, is much more profitable for companies. In the end, a game with microtransacciones is synonymous with constant cash and sound continuously in time . Is it the best model for the consumer? It will depend on him, ultimately.

The bottom line with which, I think, we should stay, is that the era of free games with micropayments has just begun and, much to my regret, it can only get worse – or better, as you are more or less willing to pay for skins, personalization and unimportant objects. Fortnite, Harry Potter and Pokémon GO are just three examples of the enormous amount of money that can be generated by offering enhancers and improvements in exchange for a reduced price. At the end of the day, 4.99 euros do not hurt in your pocket. The problem is when those 4.99 euros become 4.99 euros a day . There the thing changes.